Boing.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Somehow it make me think of my mother and father fat away in Puddleby, with their regular habits, the evening practise on the flute and the rest - doing the same thing every day. I felt sorry of sorry for them in a way, because they must the fun of this traveling life, where we were doing something new ask the time- even sleeping differently. But I suppose if they had been invited to go to bed on a pavement in front of a shop they wouldn't have cared for the idea at all. It is funny how some people are.

...well, then he wanted at least to savor his loneliness and sadness and feel really miserable. - - - - - -
He understood that this had to be, that he must relinquish his dearest and best and purest possession, and see it die.

It's very simple. Dogs and cats and other talented animals have tails; their tails, with their thousands of flourishes, provide them with a wonderfully complete language of arabesques, not only for what they think and feel and suffer but for every mood and vibration of their being, for every infinitesimal variation in their feeling tone. We have no tails, and since the more lively among us need some such form of expression, we make ourselves paintbrushes and pianos and violins...

And sometimes there are birds that have come a long long way from strange islands; they are very tired, they sit down on the deck and they're very much surprised to see so many strange people riding around on the ocean. They would like to understand us too, adn ask us where we come from and what our names are, but they can't so we just look into each other's eyes and nod our heads, and when the bird has had a good rest, he shakes himself and flies off across the ocean.

Once he muttered absently, "One might paint all that."
~
And when old people get older and older, they die in the end. I'd rather stay the way I am, and sometimes I'd like to be able to fly, and fly around the trees way up high, and in between the clouds. then I'd laugh at everybody.

~ ~ ~

I'd like to do entirely different things. I'd like to understand what the robins say to each other. And I'd like to see how the trees manage to drink water with their roots and get to be so big. I don't think anybody really knows that. The teacher knows a lot, but only boring things.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Some people have a sixth sense, and some are duds at it. I believe I must have it, because the moment I stepped into the house I felt a trembling along my skin, a traveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't.
- - -
It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I've never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.
- -
I am?
Yes, you are, because as long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.
-
There's a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.
--
It was like I was wearing a pair of gloves with magic properties. Like I could preserve whatever I touched.
---
When you're unsure of yourself, she said, when you start pulling back into doubt and small living, she's the one inside saying - get up from there and live like the glorious girl you are, - she's the power inside you, you understand?
- -
She's a year younger than me. I always picture her like is in the photograph in his office, holding hish hand, jumping a wave. I keep my mother's things on a special shelf in my room, and I let Becca look at them but not touch. One day I will let her pick them up, since it seems that's what a girlfriend would do. the feeling that they are holy objects is already starting to wear off. Before long I'll be handing Becca my mother's brush, saying - here, you wanna brush your hair with this -- you wanna wear this whale pin?

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

by Marc Chagall
Long, long ago the marble slab on the grave of my little sister, Rachel, disappeared. She wasted away as the result of eating charcoal. At last, pale and thin, she breathed her last sigh. Her eyes filled with the blue of heaven, with dark silver. Her pupils became fixed. Flies hovered around her nostrils. No one drove them away.
I got up from the chair, drove them away, and sat down again. I got up again and I sat down again.
My eyes were scarcely wet when I saw the candles lighted at the head of her bed. An old man stood by her side guarding her all night long.
And to think that, in few hours, that little body will be lowered into the earth and men's feet will trample on it!
No one gives a thought to dinner. My sisters have hidden behind the curtains at the door, they weep, press their ten fingers to their mouths and dry their tears with their hear and their blouses.